


Hang Together

by HLine



Series: Templar Connor [4]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:40:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4887649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HLine/pseuds/HLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Templars and Assassins have been fighting longer than recorded history; what would it take for them to stop?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opening Gambit

**Author's Note:**

> And here you guys are; the third part of the 'Templar Connor' series. I'm going to try for weekly updates; if things go well, hopefully I'll be able to bump it up to twice a week. No promises though. :P

Trotting down the road on top of his horse, Haytham kept his gaze straight ahead and ignored the dirty looks that the filthy lounging men shot at him as he rode past. He did not care for this part of New York; too many men lolling about instead of working, half-naked children running around, women already halfway to passing out from drink; it was everything that he wished to stop with his Order. Not to mention the likelyhood that some group of men would decide to try and rob him on his way back home. Blood was always so terribly difficult for Ms. Potts to get out of his shirts. 

Really, if Shay hadn't called him down here with an urgent letter, he wouldn't have bothered to leave his house at all. With the events of the last few months, Haytham had found his patience for being called on for petty issues drying up faster than a stream during a drought. 

Gently tugging his horse's reins, he pulled to a stop in front of a particularly dilapidated-looking old warehouse. Why they could not meet at the Armory, Haytham thought as he dismounted, he did not know. Hopefully Shay would have a good explanation. 

Tying his horse up and hiding it so that it would not get stolen, he slipped into the building. Almost immediately, he had to cover his face to keep from sneezing. Dust and filth coated the floor and walls, turning it all a dull grayish-brown. Broken crates and boxes lined the walls, their whole cousins stacked in towering piles that turned the insides of the building into a maze. Ignoring the crawling caution at that thought, Haytham strode forward into the dimness.

"Sir."

Haytham did not jump and whirl around at the sound of the Irish-accented voice coming from the shadows. He merely casually turned around and raised an eyebrow at the younger man. "Shay," he replied. "I assume you have a good reason for calling me out here?"

Shay, his hair now streaked with grey, nodded as he stepped into the weak morning light that managed to creep through the cracks in the walls. "Yessir," he said. "There's been some strange things going on down here, and I found something interesting connected to it last evening. I thought that it would be easier to explain if I could show you in person. If you'll follow me?"

"Lead the way."

Following Shay into the back rooms, Haytham thought over the last few reports from the man.

It had been a long time since the man had been in New York, he knew. After saving his son's life during the debacle at Mount Johnson, Shay's many contacts up and down the coast of the colonies had finally brought up some news as to the whereabouts of that damnable box that had brought him to the Order in the first place. Apparently, Davenport had sent it to his continental contacts, whereupon it had apparently begun to take a lazy tour around Europe, much like the overbred son of some minor English Lord. Once he had found this out, he had taken off after it like a hound on the final leg of a fox hunt with Haytham's blessing. And after that, it had taken the better part of five years before Haytham heard from him again. 

And by that, Haytham meant that he had shown up on Haytham's doorstep, the box disguised as a package underneath his arm, and a shit-eating grin on his face. 

In any case, he had slipped back into the rhythms of their Order's life with little issue, aside from some grumbling from members who were too new to remember his previous service with them. Nipping those problems in the bud with a friendly drink or two, Haytham had sat back and watched as he quickly took over the day to day running of their street-level activities with satisfaction and allowed himself to turn his attention to more over-arching concerns, content to let the man do his work.

Until now. The letter that he had sent had had a worrying undertone of nervousness, something that Haytham had rarely heard from Shay before. Thus, why he was now following him through a rather well-concealed trapdoor into what appeared to be a cellar.

The damp little room was surprisingly well lit with lanterns and a cunning little set-up of mirrors that magnified their light. Mostly bare, with a few boxes shoved and stacked haphazardly in a corner, the room was dominated by the large table in the middle of it that had a dead man's half-nude body lying sprawled on top of it.

Haytham's eyebrows shot up. Shooting a glance over at the other man, he waited for an explanation. 

Shay did not disappoint. 

"This man was one of my agents in this part of the city," he said brusquely, striding to the table. "He was a good one. Quiet, efficient; he also had a knack for ferreting out Assassin movements through the city. Not even all that expensive, considering how helpful that's been in the past."

"And now he's dead."

"Aye," Shay said, now standing on the opposite side of the table and looking down on the man with sorrowful shadow on his face. "Not that surprising, I suppose. But I broke bread with him more than once, so when he showed up in the gutter, I figured that I owed him something more than a note in a ledger about paying his widow. And that's when I noticed something odd." Gentle hands tilted the head back and adjusted the mirrors above them, exposing pale flesh to the light of the lanterns.

Coming closer, Haytham squinted in the light. 

There. Underneath the jaw, right where it turned into neck, a small cut that Haytham had inflicted on countless men, leaving them to choke on their own blood. 

"Assassins," Haytham stated, glancing up at Shay. 

But the other man was shaking his head. "I thought that at first too, but there were a few things that didn't add up. When I found him -" he paused. 

Haytham waited patiently.

"When I talked to the people that alerted me, they said that the man dumping him wore a white hood and was wearing an odd-looking bracer. And that once the man was done, he climbed to the top of a building and ran along it for a few houses before jumping off."

For a moment, Haytham didn't see what the problem was. Then it hit him. He narrowed his eyes.

"Master Assassins don't dump bodies."

"Exactly," Shay said, looking relieved that Haytham had seen his point. "And the mention of the hood, the bracers, jumping off buildings - most Assassins are a little more subtle than that these days; at least, they wouldn't let everyone see them doing such things immediately. So that's when I decided to take a closer look at the body."

Reaching over the body, he picked up an arm and held it up to the light. Around the wrist, red and purple marks showed how the man had been tied up. Haytham frowned.

"He was tied up," he said slowly, "and yet he was stabbed in the neck rather than the chest." Furiously, his mind churned as the implications of what was in front of him sank in. 

The easiest way to dispose of someone that was tied up was usually a stab to the chest. Quick and effective, especially after an interrogation. A stab to the neck was more unusual. Usually, if one insisted on a throat wound, it was easier to simply cut the jugular vein that was on the side of the neck.

"Such an awkward way," Haytham murmured, "to kill a tied up man." Straightening, he tucked his hands behind his back.

"What does this say, then, in your opinion?" he asked the man across from him bluntly.

"I think that the Assassins had nothing to do with this, sir," Shay said, his face serious. "I think that another party that we didn't know of before this is doing their best to make us think so, though. And I'm thinking that with this sort of frame-up, they know a lot more about our fight than an unknown party has any right to."

"A rather accurate reading of the situation, Shay," Haytham said. "But that does leave the question of who this party is and why they are going through such effort to have us believe that it was an Assassin that killed our friend here."

"Unfortunately, I've got no theories so far on that matter," the Irish man replied, looking unhappy. "And I wasn't able to track down the man that did the dumping in the first place either."

Haytham bit the inside of his cheek, looking back down at the body in front of them and considering their options. They didn't have many. While the news was distressing, without any real leads to follow up on, this was just a mystery that they would have to solve at a later date. 

"Keep your ear to the ground for any more such incidents," he said finally as the silence between them stretched out uncomfortably. "I know that this is distressing, but without any more information, we cannot make a move. In the meantime, continue operations as normal. Hopefully, the group behind this will make a mistake and we'll be able to track them to whatever hole they're hiding in."

Shay nodded, still looking down at his operative's body. 

Something small squirmed uncomfortably in Haytham's gut. He knew that look on the man's face. He had seen it on his own in the mirror. Helplessness, self-recrimination. Tentatively, he reached out and placed a hand on Shay's shoulder. 

"It might take some time," he said, keeping his voice low, "but I promise you, I will brook no interference such as this in our work. We will find those that did this. And we will end them."

Shay only nodded slowly, still looking down at the body.

Haytham didn't know what to do, an all-too-familiar feeling these days. Letting his hand drop by his side, he turned to leave. 

"Sir," Shay said.

Haytham turned back.

"When we do find them," he continued. "I want first crack at 'em."

Haytham nodded.

* * *

Outside, the sun had risen more, enough to illuminate the little alleyways that surrounded the main street Haytham found himself riding down.

A group of people. Trying to make them think that the Assassins were behind the latest bit of bad luck the Order was facing. He wanted to rub the bridge of his nose in frustration.

With the Revolution going on, he simply did not have the time necessary to look into interlopers in the Order's war with the Assassins. Keeping control of the various parties that had a finger in the pie that was this new nation was hard enough without having to second-guess every apparent attack by the Assassins. And the Assassins had hardly been sitting on their heels during the fight. Sabotage, thievery, and of course their namesake attacks -

Although, now that Haytham thought about it...

Some of those thefts had been somewhat unusual for Assassins. Gunpowder and metal had been stolen from Johnson's shipments, without it appearing later in the Revolutionary camp. No signs of interrogations, and the notations on later shipments hadn't been taken either. 

The amount of supplies stolen was no small thing. The gunpowder alone was enough to outfit an entire fleet's worth of cannons - the metal could have made enough guns for a regiment. In his attempt to track their path after being taken, he had managed to trace them to Boston before losing the trail entirely. In fact, such a large amount being stolen and not being given to the rebels - the Assassins had no need for that much ammunition with their numbers. And in the reports of the thefts...

Those scenes had had everything but the traditional bloody feather. Almost as 'obvious' as Shay's murdered employee. 

Could there be a connection? Could the people behind their lost contact also be behind the thefts?

Haytham shook his head and snorted at himself. Look at him; a hint of uncertainty and he was already chasing his tail. He was pathetic. 

With how far the meeting place was from his home, most of the city was awake by the time Haytham was anywhere close to his home. Weaving in and out of the crowds, trying not to trample anyone under his horse's hooves, he felt as impatient as the snorting beast underneath him was, dancing in place as they waited for an over-laden cart to pass them. There had been more than one reason why he had been reluctant to meet Shay, after all. 

And yet, now that he was away, he was almost reluctant to return. Once he reached his house, he could barely bring himself to hand over his horse's reins to a sleepy-looking stable boy and walk through the door. Yet another thing to scorn himself for. 

Stepping inside, he was almost immediately met by Ms. Potts, her arms reaching out to take his coat.

"Here you are, sir," she said soothingly, "did the meeting go well, then?"

Haytham sighed. "That depends on your point of view, Ms. Potts," he said, his tiredness leaking into his voice.

"Ah," she said, nodding, "I'll send a pot of tea up, then, once you've settled in again."

"My thanks," Haytham replied, already heading towards the stairs. Behind him, he could hear her bustle away, no doubt to cuff a few maids around the ear. She was a treasure, that woman.

The air was cool, even up here. It seemed that the maids really had been slacking off like Ms. Potts had been complaining of lately. Ah well. He could forgive such things so long as the room he was headed towards was properly heated. 

The gratifying crackle of a fire greeted him as he opened the white-washed door. Slipping inside, Haytham was quick to close it behind him to keep the heat in. He didn't want Connor to catch a chill, after all. Pausing there at the doorway, Haytham looked down at his son.

He looked far smaller and younger, lying on the bed tucked under a quilt. His hair, usually tied back, fanned out on the pillow beneath his head. There was no tension in his face, no hint of the worries he carried as a Knight of the Templar Order. It was almost refreshing - he hadn't seen such peace on his son's face since he was a small child. But quite frankly, by this point, Haytham would have taken his son's face screwed up in pain if it meant that his eyes were open.

Closing his eyes, he leaned back against the door.

He hadn't wanted to let Connor go. After that strange affair during his hunt for von Statten, Haytham knew that he had acted in a way that was not worthy of a Templar Grand Master. His son was a Knight, as he had pointed out before leaving, not a child. And yet Haytham had acted more as an over-protective father than a Templar. 

He wished that he had been stubborn enough to continue acting like one in the face of his son's shame, though. If he had -

If he had, his son wouldn't still be lying in a bed, slowly wasting away and dead to the world. 

Rubbing his face, he stepped away from the door and towards the bed. Dragging his fingers along the quilt, he stopped at the pillow and looked down at his son's face. Gently, he reached down a brushed a few hairs from the side of Connor's face.

He had felt like he was going to die when he had gotten the letter from Wilkinson. Dropping everything, he had ruined three horses getting out to Connor's location in record time, only to find him unconcious and unmoving, lying in a filthy cabin and looking like death.

Wilkinson had done his best, of course. He knew that Haytham was his superior, and he was friends with Connor as well. But that far out in the Frontier, there was very little that he could have done besides make Connor comfortable and send for Haytham. And it was not as if Haytham had been able to do much better. A parade of doctors had been through his house, each one more useless than the last. His son had been bled, sweated, slathered with innumerable concoctions, all to no avail. He remained as still and dead to the world as when he had been brought in. 

If it hadn't been for Ms. Potts, Haytham doubted that he would have been able to function at all. The woman had been a wonder, forcing him to eat and sleep, rearranging the room so that Haytham did not have to leave to continue his work with the Order. She even took charge of most of Connor's care, making sure that he did not wallow in his own filth, drank what little broth that could be forced through his lips, was sponged down on a regular basis - she was truly worth every penny Haytham had paid for her voyage across the ocean all those years ago.

But even with all of her help, Haytham had been having the creeping feeling over the last few months of being overwhelmed. 

Why did everything have to happen now? His son in a coma, with no sign of waking up. Massive amounts of supplies going missing. More and more of the Order's informants disappearing by the day. And now a mysterious third group appearing in the war with the Assassins to further muddle things up. 

Well. Haytham sat down at the desk that had been set up, pulling a sheet of paper from one of the drawers. The first step to dealing with that feeling was to delegate everything that he could; something that he had not been doing in an attempt to distract himself from his worry for Connor. 

The possible Boston connection. He could have Miss McCarthy look into that, look over any suspicious recent deaths and missing supplies. 

Twice was coincidence, three times was enemy action, after all.

* * *

Jenny dangled the necklace in front of her, watching the way the early morning light streaming in the window bounced off its pendant, making it glitter. Made of what seemed to be polished silver, it was shaped into Juno's Sceptre, a rather odd symbol to be found around a dead man's neck. She hadn't been aware that it had acquired some recent resurgence in popularity, but considering the amount of times recently that reports had crossed her desk talking about seeing the symbol somewhere in Boston, she rather thought that it was time to start putting things together. 

Thus, why her second in command and field operations commander were sitting uncomfortably in the stiff-backed chairs that populated her office with cups of tea, staring daggers at each other but not saying anything. 

A particularly loud, obnoxious slurp from Joseph broke the silence that had settled over the room. 

"You are certain, then, that this is the symbol you have seen graffitied around the city," Saint-Prix said. His tone was thick with doubt.

The Nightstalker took another loud, obnoxious slurp of his tea before putting his cup aside and glaring at the Frenchman. "Yeah," he said, his eyes narrowed underneath the brim of his hat. "It is." 

Jenny wanted to rub her temples. She was getting too old for this sort of shit. As it was, all she allowed herself to do was briefly close her eyes. Opening them, she cut Saint-Prix off from whatever doubtful words he had been about to spew with a gesture. 

"If that is what Joseph believes, William," she said, looking at him warningly, "then that is what he saw."

"But for what reason would some random symbol suddenly be showing up all over the city?" he argued, his dark brows lowering over his eyes. "It makes no sense - it is far more likely that this is just some personal bit of jewelry that 'the Nightstalker' is blowing out of proportion."

"This ain't the first time I've seen it, Frenchie," Joseph growled. "It's been popping up for years, which you'd know if you did anything beside guzzle wine and complain about being stuck in 'some provincial excuse of a city'."

Fuck this. Jenny dropped her head and gave in to the temptation to rub her temples.

"Children," she said, her voice colder than a winter wind, "if you are quite done, I would like to know what, precisely, the man wearing this necklace was doing sniffing around one of our warehouses."

Both of them stiffened in their chairs. William hastily brought his cup up to his mouth as she pinned him with a particularly disapproving look.

The man had been an annoyance from the moment that he had set foot in the colonies. Coming from the French Brotherhood, he had apparently been used to a far more hierarchical organization. The first time that a field Assassin had come up to her with some complaint he had been agog at their apparent 'temerity' in directly speaking to her. She had had to stop him from berating them later, after which she had been forced to sit him down and explain the differences between the New World and the Old.   
It had not been a fun one. Apparently Paris, at least, had been split into different districts, with each one having a greater leading Assassin that the lower-ranked Assassins reported to, who in turn reported to one great Assassin that oversaw the entire city. William had expected something similar coming over, rather than the more egalitarian structure that Achilles had set up in his time as Mentor.

Jenny supposed that that was why the Frenchman had had so much trouble over his years here. She knew, of course, of the arguments between him and the other Assassins. What they saw as an openess and willingness to hear their voices, he saw as disrespectful questioning. Joseph especially seemed to resent his disapproval, shooting back pointed comments every time William opened his mouth. William in turn became even more critical, to the point of denying some of their agents entry into her house on the grounds of secrecy. 

The problem was, there was a fundamental misunderstanding over how much authority William had, one that persisted no matter how many times Jenny tried to clear things up. William, despite the stick up his arse, was her second in command, who deserved to have his commands respected unless she directly contradicted him. The other Assassins, however, seemed to believe his position to be more similar to being a glorified clerk, meekly handing down her orders, and as such reacted poorly to what they saw as his overreach. 

But today, Jenny was tired and did not feel like disciplining either of them. Instead, she decided to focus on keeping them on the debriefing. 

"Near as Stephane could tell, he was trying to steal some of the powder we had stockpiled there," Joseph said, leaning back in his chair with a huff. "Same as the last few bastards we caught sniffing around the area."

"And you knew this how?"

Joseph glared at William.

"I knew due to the fucking barrel he was lifting into a wagon."

"Both of you - enough." Jenny's voice was like the crack of a whip. They both shrank back in their chairs, metaphorically pinning their ears back like dogs. "Joseph, did you get anything else from the man?"

The scarred man shook his head. "Only this piece of paper, but it looks like its covered in gibberish," he said, pulling it out of his coat and handing it to her. "He chewed the tip of his tongue off rather than talk."

That made Jenny raise an eyebrow even as she accepted the piece of paper. "Chewed his tongue off? That quickly?" The image that arose in her mind was disturbing. "Usually it takes a little longer before someone is killing themselves to keep from talking."

"Perhaps one of the Templar's true believers," William suggested. "The good lord knows Kenway encourages that sort of thinking amongst his men."

Jenny frowned. "Not to the point that they immediately try to kill themselves, though," she pointed out. "Putting that sort of devotion, or fear, into a man is not an easy prospect. Most men would try to escape -"

"- this one just killed himself right away." 

Oh dear, Joseph was looking smug. William was not going to be happy after this meeting. She could feel the headache beginning to throb at the base of her skull. 

"Besides," she said, forging onwards, "when have the Templars ever bothered with stealing when they could just buy? No, they just would have rolled the barrels into the harbour."

"Exactly," Joseph said, smirking at William.

"Joseph."

The smirk dropped from his face as Jenny glared at him.

Sighing, she rubbed her forehead. This was a mess. Infighting amongst her people and a new group showing up out of nowhere in her city, stealing their supplies for God only knew what. And that was on top of the usual Templar activities in her city, which were stretching her forces thin.

Speaking of which, did she even have the manpower to investigate this? 

Mentally running down the lists of assignments she had recently handed out, she winced internally. 

She didn't. Damn. 

She'd have to do this herself then.

Breathing in deeply, she sat back in her chair.

"Joseph," she said, "I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. I will be investigating this personally." She ignored how both of their eyes widened at that. "Tomorrow night, I want you to show me where this happened. In the meantime, try to keep the scene isolated as best you can."

His eyes still wide, Joseph bowed his head in acknowledgement. "As you say, Mistress Scott."

She nodded regally back at him. "Dismissed."

Standing up and putting his wide-brimmed hat back onto his head, Joseph bowed again before exiting. William stayed seated, his eyes tracking the other man's movements and a fingernail tapping out a rhythm against the porcelain of his teacup.

Once the door clicked shut, Jenny pulled some more reports in front of her in the vain hope of fending off the explosion that she knew was coming. 

She did not have to wait long.

The tapping fingernail against the fine china slowly sped up, from a lazy heartbeat to a thunderous rainstorm against a tin roof, until it suddenly stopped as William stood up. 

"He is arrogant," he said venomously. Looking up from the paper in front of her, she saw her red-faced subordinate staring at the door, his knuckles white around the delicate handle of his tea cup. Sighing quietly, Jenny put her papers down and braced herself.

"He is confident," she replied.

William's head whipped around, his lips pressed tightly together until they were bloodless. "Confidence does not excuse rudeness," he hissed. "His speech to me was entirely inappropriate -"

"You were no angel there either, Saint-Prix," Jenny warned, cutting him off. "You constantly undercut him -"

"I cautioned him!" William snapped, placing down his cup on her desk with a definite click. "He runs off with his pet theories far too much! Who ever heard of some third party interfering in our fight against the Templars -"

"Who ever heard of two groups of people locked in an unending war with each other?" Jenny asked. She steepled her fingers in front of her face and leaned forward, watching his face carefully. "The fact of the matter is, neither of you were in the right in that briefing. But Joseph can at least get along with the other people in our cell; something that you seem to struggle with."

William glared.

Jenny sighed again and leaned back in her chair. "Why can you not even try to get along with your fellow Assassins?" she asked tiredly. "Why must I constantly be breaking up fights between you two?"

William's glare only deepened. She watched as he took in a deep breath, clearly trying to keep a reign on his anger. "It is -" he choked slightly, grinding his teeth together. "It is because of this." He spread his arms out wide.

Jenny raised an eyebrow at him, not understanding what he was getting at. "The room?"

He growled low in his throat at her incomprehension. "Your defence of him, of all of them," he snarled.

"Well, they are my subordinates and therefore under my protection -"

"And am I not one of them? Do I not deserve your support as well?"

Jenny blinked and narrowed her eyes. "I don't follow."

William let out a gusty sigh and turned around, putting his hands on his hips. Tension suffused his frame, stiffening his shoulders. "I have noticed," he began quietly, "that while you often defend our subordinates, I do not seem to have the same respect extended to me."

"You are my second in command," Jenny replied automatically, "you -"

"Are constantly undercut, disagreed with and treated like a glorified clerk!" William snapped, whirling around. Slamming a hand down on the desk, he leaned forward and looked her in the eye. "In my seven years on these shores, I have been on five field assignments. Two of those were with you. The rest of the time I have been doing your paperwork and handing out assignments! I am a full Assassin! And yet you seem to think that I am of most use behind a desk rather than actually working!"

"You do do work, Saint-Prix -"

"Not the sort that would earn me any respect amongst my fellow cell members! None that would actually allow me to gain any authority over them! I know what they say about me," he said, leaning closer, "that I am just a clerk, a yes-man, not competent enough to be trusted with any real power. And the result is what you saw here - disrespect and hostility."

Jenny opened her mouth to deny it, but nothing would come out. Guilt curled in her stomach like a snake - she could see what he was saying. And she couldn't say that he was wrong. After all, hadn't she heard the same whispers? Ignoring them and telling herself that they would settle down had not done anything. 

Perhaps it was time to be a little more proactive.

"Let me do something," William said, his tone almost pleading, like she had never heard from him before. "Let me be the Assassin I was trained to be. I cannot continue to be behind a desk, swallowing insults all day long. Let me work with the other Assassins and earn their trust. Let me prove their words wrong."

Jenny didn't say anything for several long heartbeats. Her blood rushing in her ears, she thought over her treatment of William, desperate to find something to prove him wrong. But she knew that she wouldn't. William was many things, but delusional was not one of them. 

No. What he said was true. She had been misusing him, widening the gulf between him and the rest of the cell. And she hadn't even noticed. Pursing her lips, she looked at him, still leaning over her desk and staring at her pleadingly. 

"I already promised Joseph that I would personally look over the matter that we were discussing," she said, "and in any case, I doubt that forcing you two together would be a good idea. However," she said, holding up a hand to stop his complaints before they started, "such an investigation will most likely take a great deal of time. It would be easier if someone were essentially handling the rest of my duties."

William frowned. "That does not sound very different than what I am doing now," he said doubtfully.

Jenny shook her head. "I'm not talking about just handing out assignments and filling out ledgers," she said. "I mean, filling in for me in every sense of the word. That means visiting safehouses, coordinating with block leaders, speaking with Assassins to figure out how best to deploy them - all things that will bring you into closer contact with them on a day to day basis."

William was still frowning. Jenny sighed. She was getting sick of sighing. "As the matter stands, I can hardly afford to treat my second in command as just another Assassin. But I can make him more involved in the day to day running of the cell. Take it or leave it."

The frown lessened. Standing up, William straightened his clothes. "I will accept it then," he said, nodding seriously. "I hope that this will calm things down."

Thinking over the debriefing that had just taken place, Jenny could only twist her lips wryly. "As do I," she said. "I'll write a letter to our block leaders immediately."


	2. Fireworks

Haytham woke to a wicked crick in his neck and an ache in his back. Opening his bleary eyes, he took in the room around him.

Weak sunlight trickled into the room through the window, its reddish-orange colour telling him that it was only just sunrise. In front of him, his desk was as covered in papers as it was last night, the topmost one a letter he had been trying to compose by candlelight, now ruined by a large scratch of ink trailing down to the bottom of the page. The cup of tea he had been drinking was now stone-cold and leaving a dark brown ring around the rim of the cup. 

Damn. He had fallen asleep at his desk again. Straightening up, he winced as his back gave a particularly loud crack. Rubbing his neck in a vain attempt to soothe its hurt, he noted that he really had to stop doing things like this. He was not a young man anymore, after all. 

Moving his hand, Haytham rubbed his face, grimacing at how the stubble rasped underneath his palm. He would have to check to make sure that he didn't get any ink on his face before he went out. If he went out. The pile that he had been trying to tackle was no smaller in the morning light than it was the previous night.

Getting up from his chair, only pausing to stretch out his back even more, Haytham looked towards his son. Connor was still lying in the bed, as motionless as he had been the previous three months. Biting the inside of his cheek, Haytham only allowed himself to briefly run a gentle hand down the side of his son's face. He could not stand to do more. Not when his son looked so much like a corpse.

A short knock at the door barely gave him enough time to straighten up before it swung inwards. 

Ms. Potts, his head maid, bustled in, a few stray grey curls escaping from underneath her cap. In her chubby, calloused hands she held a small tray with some tea and scones on it. "Good morning, sir," she said, bobbing into a brief curtsy without letting go of the tray. "How are you?"

"I am as I have been for the past three months," Haytham replied, pulling his hand away from his son's face and squeezing his fingers together. "Worried."

Ms. Potts clucked her tongue. "You can't control everything, sir," she said, setting the tray down on a clear corner of his desk. "Young Master Connor is a strong boy. He will wake as soon as he can."

Haytham flashed a weak smile. He appreciated her optimism, considering how little he could summon these days. "I shall keep that in mind," he said quietly. "In any case, though, I should be getting back to work."

"Nonsense," Ms. Potts said. She eyed him up and down in a way that would have had Haytham whipping any other servant. "You're a mess, sir. You need to tidy yourself up before you do anything else. A clean body leads to an ordered mind." Crossing the room back towards the door, she paused with her hand on the doorframe. "Would you like me to bring up a tub?"

Haytham thought about challenging her. But he dismissed it almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind. It was too early in the morning to argue, and in any case, he had gone an unusually long time without bathing (for him, at least).

"Not an entire tub, perhaps," he said, glancing back at his desk. "But I do think that some warm water would not go amiss, if you please."

"As you wish, sir," Ms. Potts said, bobbing into a curtsy again. 

As soon as the hem of her skirt vanished, Haytham sighed and sat down at his desk. Taking the ruined letter, he folded it neatly and put it to one side, making a note to give it to Ms. Potts when she came back up. With how expensive paper was lately, he'd only throw a piece out if it was soaked with ink. Ms. Potts would undoubtedly find some use for it, even if it was just for a grocery list. 

Pulling the report he had been looking at last night, he looked at it with fresh eyes. 

It was from Biddle, down the coast. He had been complaining about missing gunpowder - shipments that were supposed to have arrived seemingly having been lost at sea, but the ships carrying them turning up at port later. Warehouses raided, the more valuable items such as sugar untouched. 

Normally, Haytham would have written off such attacks as Assassin attacks. But with what Shay had told him the previous day, he was now going over the report again, paying closer attention. If there truly was a third group in their little war, he doubted that the murder of Shay's contact was their first action.

Then a roar slammed into him like a physical force.

For several long heartbeats, all Haytham was aware of was the ringing in his head. He was lying on the floor, glass littering the floor and glittering in the early morning sunlight, his head aching.

What on earth had just happened? Delicately, he touched his face, pulling away blood-covered fingertips. A cold breeze blew through the room, lifting the shredded curtains gently. Carefully, he began to sit up, avoiding placing his arms down on top of any of the shards of glass. Standing up, he half-hysterically noted how the windows were utterly destroyed, their supportive struts splintered. He had just gotten them the previous year, too, so as to better keep the room warm -

Connor. 

Haytham whirled, uncaring of the crunching underfoot. His son was still lying on the bed, as still as ever. If any of the glass had reached him -

There was a small cut on his son's chin, the skin scraped away from a small shard that gleamed on the sheets beside his head. More small shards, like tiny diamonds, littered the quilt lying on top of him. But besides that tiny cut, there didn't seem to be any real damage.

Tension Haytham hadn't realized was there drained from his frame. His son was alright.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs outside. The door was flung open, banging against the wall as a frantic-looking Ms. Potts, her cap half-on, half-off her head and her hair falling out of its bun. 

"Master Kenway!" she shouted, "Are you alright?!"

Haytham straightened, suddenly remembering the bloody fingers he had seen before checking on his son. He must look a fright, he thought calmly. 

"I am alright, Ms. Potts," he said gently. "Nothing but superficial damage, I assure you."

"You're bleeding though, sir," she said, striding towards him with crunching steps. Pulling out a handkerchief, she began to dab at the cuts on his face. "Those need to be treated. I don't know what happened, everything was completely normal, I was just working on the bread when that awful noise rattled the room -"

"So it was nothing that we did, then?" Haytham asked. His mind, stuttering and slowed from shock and worry, began to spin again. Glancing out the shattered window, he could see smoke on the horizon, coming from the denser parts of the city. The cloud was enormous, and distantly, he could hear the ringing of churchbells, no doubt calling on citizens to help put out the fires that the explosion had caused.

He needed to go there. He needed to know what had caused that explosion, and how it affected the Order. Turning back to Ms. Potts, he gently caught her wrist in his hand.   
"Ms. Potts," he said, "it seems that there was an explosion in the city. I have to go and help." His tone brooked no disobedience, but the older woman looked ready to try. 

"But sir -"

"Ms. Potts," he said, adding disapproval, "I must go. Undoubtedly, people need help. May I leave this house in your capable hands?" 

Her chin rounded out stubbornly, but she nodded. "I'll make sure things are back in order by the time you return, sir," she said. "I'll move Connor as well so he doesn't get a chill."

Haytham smiled slightly. "Thank you," he said warmly, snatching up his hat from the floor where it fell. 

His horse, thankfully, had not been injured in the explosion. It was panicked, however, and it took Haytham several minutes to calm it down enough for him to mount it. Once that was done, however, he made excellent time into the heart of the city. His stomach dropped, however, when he saw what had been done to it.

It was carnage. Pure, bloody carnage. Houses were shattered and splintered, their glass having also been cracked and flung about willy-nilly. Unlike at Haytham's home, though, it was too densely populated to avoid injuries. Slowing his horse down, he dismounted so as to keep from accidentally trampling any of the bloodied and groaning bodies lying on the streets. 

For a very short moment, Haytham felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pain and death surrounding him. Years before, Shay had spoken to him briefly about Lisbon while deep in his cups. His descriptions of a city shattering around him, how the air had filled with the screams of the dying and injured, how he had been helpless in the face of such a solid wall of human suffering, came flooding back to Haytham. There were so many bodies surrounding him, injured friends and family trying to tend to their more badly hurt companions, that he quite simply had no idea where to start. Or even what it was that he wanted to start. 

"Master Kenway!"

The shout was barely heard over the noise that filled the street. A filthy man, his frame covered in soot, darted through the crowd. As he came closer, Haytham saw the pair of spectacles just barely hanging onto his pale face.

"Doctor White," Haytham said, recognition striking him. The good doctor, who had been one of the first to look Connor over once he had been returned home and the only one to not immediately write him off, was frantic, his eyes so wide that the whites could be seen all around the irises. 

The doctor skidded to a halt in front of Haytham, gasping for air. "Master Kenway, I am glad to see you," he said. "Please, I need your help."

Jumping on the sense of direction that the man was offering, Haytham clapped a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Any help I can give is yours," he said. The feeling of certainty was a good one as it flowed back into his body. 

Doctor White placed his hand over Haytham's, still looking panicked. "It's your horse I need right now," he said. "Maria and Ellen - they were in the root cellar when the explosion happened, thank the Lord, but half the house seems to have collapsed on top of the doors to it, and I can't move it by myself -"

"No worries," Haytham said, grasping his request. "Just lead the way."

Doctor White nodded and turned on his heel, not quite sprinting away. It was just fast enough that Haytham was forced to remount his steed to better guide it through the bodies. 

"Do you know what happened?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the street. "I only realized something had happened when my windows shattered -"

"Count yourself lucky that that was all that happened to you," Lyle said grimly. "Ours is not the only house that half-collapsed in that explosion. But as to what happened, I cannot say." Glancing up at Haytham, he pushed his glasses up his nose. "All I know is that the worst of the damage I saw seemed to be near the docks."

Haytham didn't have a chance to answer, as they had reached the White's house.

The brick home seemed relatively fine from the street; indeed, compared to the houses around it, it seemed remarkably untouched. But as he followed the doctor around the back, he almost sucked in some air through his teeth. The back half of the house had seemingly completely collapsed. Its bricks were in piles, knocked loose from weak mortar, the underlying beams and broken floorboards tangled together and piled on top of one another in such a way to be almost immovable. Glancing down, Haytham could see where the frantic man must have cleared away the bricks, with several ends of the wooden beams lying on top of the cellar doors. They were particularly large ones, undoubtably part of the main frame of the house. 

Dr. White scurried through the rubble, heading directly towards the beams. Twisting his head around, he frantically gestured for Haytham to follow him.

"This way, Master Kenway, please!" he said hysterically. "They're in the root cellar!"

The root cellar? Haytham stiffened and looked closer at the beams, sucking a breath through his teeth.

Those beams that he had glanced at and dismissed were blocking the entrance to the root cellar. And now that he was closer, he could hear the weak pounding emanating from the thin doors. 

"Lyle," came the muffled tones of Ellen, "Lyle, are you there?" 

The doctor dropped to his knees and laid a hand on the splintering wood, and wild and tender look on his face. "Yes," he said, "yes, Ellen, I'm here, I'm back. I found Master Kenway, he has a horse -"

"Mistress White," Haytham said, crouching down by Dr. White, "I must ask before I do anything, are you and Maria alright?"

"Yes," came the half-sobbed reply, "yes, we're both fine, just a few bruises. Please, Master Kenway, get us out of here!"

"The dust's so thick!" said Maria, her voice as muffled as her mother's.

Dr. White turned to him, his face pleading. "Please, sir," he said, "Ellen's so close to delivery, I don't want her in there any longer than she has to be."

Haytham nodded and stood up, dusting his hands off on his trousers. He had forgotten that Ellen was pregnant. That certainly made things more urgent. Striding over to his horse, he patted it's flank and began to look around for rope.

None was immediately apparent. Cursing mentally, he slipped into his special vision and scanned the yard again.

There. Fluttering slightly in the wind, rope dangled from a shattered beam of one of the other houses. Flexing his fingers, he headed towards it. He had a woman to save.

* * *

Haytham made it home nearly an hour after sunset, his feet dragging with exhaustion, but not daring to burden his horse with his weight after a day spent hauling loads of bricks and timber. His exhaustion wasn't just physical, either - finding the bodies that had been crushed under falling masonry, hearing the wails of the injured and of those finding their loved ones dead had hollowed out his heart. 

That was why, despite all of his upbringing and normal self-control, he audibly sighed at the sight of a dirty and unhappy-looking Hickey and Shay sitting in his parlor when he walked through the door.

Hickey, pouring more than a dram of some alcoholic drink that made Haytham's nostrils sting from across the room into his teacup from a flask, barely looked up, his face grim. "I knows it's been a long day, Boss," he said, tucking the flask back into his coat, "but once I realized what Cormac here had found, I knew you'd want to see it as soon as possible."

With slightly less grace than usual, Haytham sat down in the chair opposite of the two men. Without a word, a maid appeared and poured him a cup of tea before disappearing as silently as she had come. Picking the cup up, Haytham took a sip before saying anything. "And what news, precisely," he asked, a little more severely than intended, "is that?"

"We know what caused that explosion, and it weren't no accident."

Haytham felt himself still, his blood chilling in his veins. 

"What?"

Shay, who hadn't moved at all since Haytham had entered the room, suddenly lurched forward and placed a rough burlap bag on the table in front of them.

Delicately, some animalistic part of his mind afraid of danger from the innocuous bag, he opened it and pulled out its contents. Several pieces of what seemed to be rubbish filled the bag - pieces of wood, a long thin strip of metal, and several other small pieces of metal.

Looking at the objects, Haytham almost sent the two men away for wasting his time. Most of this could have easily come from one of the destroyed ships in the harbour, but just as he opened his mouth to dismiss the two, a particular piece of metal caught his eye. Putting his cup down, Haytham picked up the first piece of metal with both hands and began to carefully examine it. 

A dull grey, smelling of salt and seaweed, at first he saw nothing to contradict his first impression of it being a piece of trash. But then, looking closer in the the parlor's dim light, he began to pick out several disquieting details. 

Twisted and looking as if it had been crushed underneath someone's heel, it was a thin little tube with two scorched pieces of metal at either end. Attached to it was another tube of metal, this one thinner, leading to ring glued to a piece of wood with a bit of shattered glass on the other side. 

Haytham turned it over and over in his hands, flicking his sight on and off. In his special sight, the item glowed gold, a sign of its importance. But why was it important?

Glancing up at the other two men briefly, he mentally bid his dignity goodbye and brought the item up to his nose for a good, solid, sniff.

Haytham had a sensitive nose. He excelled at being able to tell different medicines and herbs apart just by smell during his training with his father, and it was a talent that had served him well in preventing several attempted poisonings after his defection from the Assassins. As well, he had always enjoyed staying on top of the latest scientific breakthroughs while traveling through Europe. This was what allowed him to recognize, underneath the stench of seawater, the smell of sulfuric acid.

Why - Haytham narrowed his eyes and delicately pried the mechanism open a little further. In the dim light, it was difficult to see, but not impossible - 

Scorch marks.

"Ignition," he muttered. His eyes darted over the other pieces again. Now their strange shapes made sense. They must have made the casing of the bomb, and when it went off they had been flung away. A bomb - not an accident.

Glancing up at Hickey and Shay, he saw that they had seen the same as he did. Neither, could claim the same education as him - he rather doubted that they could recognize the smell of sulfuric acid. But definitely, they could have seen the scorch marks on the metal plates. Delicately putting the ignition trigger down on the table, he leaned back and steepled his fingers.

"My apologies for my previous curtness," he said, keeping his voice even. "Do we have any idea as to who created this - item?"

Hickey took a swig of his spiked tea before answering. "No," he admitted, his voice grim. 

"It was the men we were talking about."

Haytham glanced towards Shay as the man spoke his first words since Haytham had entered the room. He wasn't looking at anyone, just staring down at his white-knuckled hands in his lap. "Assassins don't use bombs. And we know that there's another group out there."

Haytham pressed his lips together tightly, preventing some rather arch words from slipping out. If it weren't for those white knuckles, he would not have bothered. After all, was it not the Assassins, with their careless pursuit of Precursor artifacts that had caused the Lisbon Earthquake? But after biting back his knee-jerk reaction, Haytham understood what Shay was saying. The Assassins were careless, yes; but there was no way that this was not done on purpose. And that was something that not even Haytham would say that the Assassins were capable of.

Hickey cleared his throat, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over them. "There are a few maker's marks on some of the other pieces of metal that we managed to find," he said, his eyes darting between the two of them. "They're both from England - but the maker only ships to two cities. Whoever did this would have had to get the pieces from one of those places."

Haytham frowned. "Which cities?" he asked, a low growl in his voice.

"Boston. And Quebec City."

Haytham closed his eyes. Two cities, quite far from New York. It would be difficult to keep on top of an investigation from so far away.

"I'll go to Quebec," Shay growled.

Haytham opened his eyes to look at the man. His knuckles were still white - but Shay was no longer staring at them. His eyes were now burning gold with their shared special vision as he glared at Haytham, daring him to say anything to contradict him.

Not that Haytham would. "Alright then," he said placidly. "Do you have any suggestions on who could be trusted with the news of this new party, Hickey?"

Silence met his ears. Turning away from Shay, Haytham raised an eyebrow at the Cockney man. "Thomas?"

Hickey was drawing his finger along the rim of his cup, not quite meeting his gaze. "We-ell," he drawled, "the thing about that is that there aren't a lot of real high-ranked bastards up in Boston who know how to keep their mouths shut. Lotta muscle, not a lot of brain. Except for McCarthy - but she's busy running three-quarters of our legit business up there, last I heard."

"And we can't leave that much money unattended," Haytham muttered. The Order was rich, yes - but that was mainly because they were careful to always keep a few agents whose main business was keeping such money flowing into their coffers. And Gillian McCarthy had been an excellent find when it came to that.

His son's find. Haytham's frown deepened. 

His son was still unconcious, lying in his bed upstairs the same way he had been for the past few months. But it was looking more and more likely that Haytham would have to personally go up to Boston. After all, much of his work was mainly based in mailing instructions to the various Order members up and down the colonies. Certainly not something that required him to stay in the same city the way Hickey's work did. Charles had to stay with the ridiculous Continental army, Pitcairn was still recovering from the attack three years ago and was under house arrest to boot by the Continental authorities; Johnson flat out did not have the skills that such a mission required. 

He bit the inside of his cheek; there was no avoiding it. He would have to go to Boston - the city he hated most in the world - and investigate this himself. 

This time allowing a sigh to pass his lips, Haytham stood up. "I will go to Boston," he said. "As soon as things are taken care of here. Hickey," he said, turning to the man, "most of the day to day running of the city will be in your hands with Shay and I being away. Do not allow things to slip out of your control. Give as much aid as you can as well; with luck, we'll be able to come back from this stronger than ever."

Hickey saluted him, and to his credit, it didn't seem to be sarcastic. "Aye aye, sir," he said solemnly, "you can count on me."

Haytham nodded back at him. "Would either of you care to stay for the night?" he asked, looking specifically at Shay. "I rather think that it has been a rather long day for all of us."

Shay almost looked like he would refuse. But then Hickey swooped in, his own eyes locked on the Irish man's hunched-over figure. 

"Yessir," he said. "My own place is a bit of a mess right now anyways; one of the buildings across the way half fell down and no one's shut up about it. Sides, the harbour's no place for the living right now."

Looking at Shay carefully, with an argument on the tip of his tongue, Haytham was relieved to see the man nod after a heartbeat of hesitation. 

"Very well then," he said. "I will call for a maid to make some beds up for the two of you."


	3. Chapter 3

Jenny was definitely going to need her bed warmed. Standing still for hours on end, watching a building and waiting for a target to appear had been easy when she was just a novice; aside from the occasional cold, it had been peaceful, getting away from the house without having someone hanging around to 'protect her virtue'. Nowadays, though, with six decades behind her, her body was far less forgiving. 

Finally, though, the door of the tavern opened, spilling out laughter, singing, and her target. Joseph had been most helpful, doing the worst of the dirty work to figure out who could possible lead them to the missing gunpowder. But regretfully, she still needed him to look over their smuggling operations while he had to continue looking over shipments, and so couldn't just let him do the rest of the investigation. So as the man lurched away, swaying slightly from the many drinks he had undoubtedly imbibed, she peeled away from the shadows of the chimney she had been hiding in and began to follow. 

Left, right, left, right, the man meandered through the streets and alleyways, the stench of alcohol floating behind him. Jenny could have used that alone to follow him, but made sure to keep him within sight anyways. The man's attempts at throwing her off of the scent were fairly pathetic - changing streets didn't help when someone was following you by rooftop, after all. It was only when he reached the entrance to the Mason tunnels that she began to get somewhat worried.

It would be far more difficult to follow him while underground. The tunnels were very narrow, with nowhere to hide except for the occasional offshoot. As well, she had no idea where he was going; this could all very easily be a trap. But if she didn't go, she would have wasted the entire night.

And she hated to waste time.

Follow him it was. 

Counting heartbeats, she waited until she was sure that he must have entered one of the offshoots of the rooms that were at the base of each cross-section before she climbed down from the roof and entered the tunnel herself. Carefully closing the door behind her, she immediately flicked on her special vision. 

The footprints of the man glowed in the darkness, casting some light that allowed her to navigate without bumping into anything. They sparkled as they lead further to the heavier door that lead into the tunnels proper, weaving around the detritus that all hiding places eventually acquired; bits of broken bottles and boxes, shredded paper, the occasional boot. Nothing was picked out in gold like the footprints were, so she padded her way down to the door, outlined in lantern light, and pressed her ear against it.

"I don't like this," the man she had been following rasped, his words only slightly slurred. "Makes my skin crawl, coming down here."

"She demands it, and so we obey." That was a new voice. Jenny tried to peer through one of the cracks in the door. It was difficult to see, but a man in a slouch hat, broad shouldered and with a sword by his side, was standing in front of a barrel, leaning forward slightly and resting a hand on top of it.

"You demand it, you mean," the man she had followed muttered. He shifted from foot to foot, his posture sullen.

The broad-shouldered man stiffened slightly, standing up. He turned his head a little to better look at the other man, exposing a rather magnificent mustache that drooped over his upper lip. 

"Pardon?" he asked, his tone dangerous.

The followed man began to sway nervously, crossing his arms. "Jus' sayin'," he muttered, turning his face away from the mustached man. "I never seen this lady you says you speak to -"

"And that is for a reason," the mustached man growled. Pulling away from the table, he stalked over to the other man, forcing him to back up against the door. He was not as tall as the man that Jenny had followed, almost half a head shorter, in fact. And yet, as the followed man's back bumped against the door, the mustached man seemed to loom over him. His eyes gleamed in the low light of the lantern on the table, one ice blue and the other a wolfish gold, lending his gaze an uncanny air. 

"Tell me," he asked the followed man, "have you ever seen the Christian god in one of his many churches? Have you ever seen an angel descend from upon high to heal a cripple of their affliction? And did you ever, before learning of Our Lady, questioned that?"

The followed man mumbled something.

"Pardon?" the mustached man said, cocking his head to one side. "I didn't quite catch that."

"No," the followed man said a little louder. 

"Hmm," the mustached man said sarcastically, narrowing his eyes. "Tell me then, why do you demand more from Our Lady than you did from your previous god?" Reaching out, he straightened the followed man's collar. "Especially when you have so recently joined?"

The followed man said nothing. 

The mustached man sneered. "I thought so," he said, pulling back slightly. "Really, you should be honored that I am here at all. After all, you were nothing when we found you in the gutter - jobless, homeless, grasping wildly for the instruction that we now so kindly provide. And now here you are, being spoken to by Her Voice personally about what a good job you have been doing with shifting our supplies."

"I am grateful," the followed man said softly, dipping his head. "For everything you've done, and will do."

"For everything She has done," the mustached man said, his voice softer now, "and will do. We are Her hands in this world, and this gunpowder will allow us to move more freely in the future." Turning back to the table, he flipped the book that he had been looking over shut. "In any case, everything appears to be in order here. May She guide us into the Grey." With a quick bob of his head, he tucked the book under his arm, grabbed a lantern from the table and entered the tunnel entrance on the right, the light from his lantern quickly fading. 

"May She guide us into the Grey," the followed man repeated. Bowing, he entered another tunnel with the other lantern, going the opposite way of the mustached man.

Jenny's mind raced. She was paralyzed, unable to figure out which of those to follow - or if it was even worth following. What had just passed between the two men was a great lump of puzzling information that she was having trouble chewing on. 

And on top of that, the mustached man's eyes, his face; something about it was familiar. Too familiar. In a way that made her steps slow and her head ring with the warning that she needed to know more to avoid any traps. 

Both of the men had disappeared by then. Jenny leaned back slightly and silently sighed. It was a moot point anyway, but she hadn't gotten this old in her line of work by ignoring her instincts. There was something that she would need to know before further pursuing it. Some memory that needed to be jogged.

Silently, she turned on her heel and began to head back to the surface. She would remember better at home, with a hot cup of tea and a warmed bed.

* * *

She didn't have time to investigate her suspicions once she got home, though. 

As soon as she stepped through the door, a maid was at her elbow, bobbing slightly in a curtsy with a worried looked stamped across her face. "Mistress," she began, her voice high and tight, "one of those gentlemen that visited you earlier this month - they are waiting for you in your study. He's the one with the large hat and the scars -"

Joseph. Jenny shut her eyes and grimaced. "I see," she said. Her eyes ached with tiredness as she opened them again. "I will go and deal with that then. Be a dear and bring me some tea, will you?" Her knees gave a particularly brutal twinge. "And a hot compress for my knees."

Brushing past the maid, who was curtsying again, she headed towards the study. For a moment, she considered pausing to take off her cloak, but decided against it. A little emotional blackmail would not go amiss, not with what was likely waiting for her in there. 

Gratifyingly, Joseph did look slightly guilty when she entered, clearly exhausted and in pain. But it was quickly wiped off of his face by self-righteousness, even as he stood up in respect. "Ma'am," he said, inclining his head.

"Joseph," Jenny replied in her coldest voice. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

To the boy's credit, he barely flinched. "I have a complaint to lodge."

Yep, this was definitely about what she expected.

"Saint-Prix has been walking around lately -"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Jenny said, striding over to the chair behind her desk and taking off her cape. "I think I know what you're going to complain about. Saint-Prix has been taking over Assassin deployments within the city and you don't like that." She spread the cloth over the back of the chair so that it could dry off from the dampness it had absorbed from the night air.

"I am the field leader of this cell," Joseph blustered, "such things fall under my purview -"

"Except, of course, when I was looking over such concerns." Content that her cape would not fall off of the chair, she turned and sat down, smoothing out a few creases in her trousers before deigning to look at the other Assassin. 

Joseph's cheeks reddened, making his facial scars stand out all the more with their paleness. His hands clenched in the poorly-disguised desire to flick out his hidden blades. Jenny rather thought that he had imagined this conversation going differently.

"He does not know our people," Joseph said through a clenched jaw, "and he isn't deploying them correctly -"

"Saint-Prix has been submitting proper reports to explain his deployments and reasonings to me, and I happen to agree with him," Jenny interrupted. "As well, how precisely is he to learn his fellow Assassins' strengths and weaknesses without ever being in charge of evaluating such things?"

Joseph, of course, had no answer. Jenny had not expected him to have one.

Leaning back in her chair, disguising the wince from the pain shooting up her spine, she folded her hands placidly in her lap. "You know, Joseph," she said conversationally, "the other day, after you left, Saint-Prix made some rather good points about the troubles that had been going on between the two of you."

"I ain't taking back any of the things I've said about that glorified clerk -" Joseph began heatedly. He shut his jaw with a click as she raised her hand.

"That is precisely what I am talking about," she said sternly. "He knows full well that he hasn't been giving you or your followers any particular reasons to respect him. That day when you left, he raised the issue with me and I agreed to have him handling more of the day to day running of the cell while I am investigating. Depending on how he handles things, I might have him continue after this is over."

"But he-"

"Enough, Joseph." Her voice was as cold as when she was rejecting her so-called 'suitors' back in London as a young woman. "Or are you putting your hurt pride ahead of the well-being of our Brotherhood?"

The young man paled, his scars standing out against his skin like brands. Silence settled over them. 

"...I'll just being going, then," he finally muttered, looking away. 

"Yes, you will," Jenny said calmly. "Oh, and Joseph?" She called as he turned to leave the room. He turned back to her, tugging on his brim. "I expect the professionalism that you've shown to me to be extended to Saint-Prix. You don't have to be his friend, but he is your superior."  
Joseph nodded once, jerkily, and then he was gone.

Jenny sighed, leaning back in her chair. As if summoned by that small exhalation, the maid that had greeted her at the door appeared, her eyes downcast and ears red. "Pardon me, mistress," she said, keeping her eyes glued to the carpet, "but will you be heading to bed now?"

Jenny rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Yes, my dear," she said, letting some of the exhaustion that she was feeling seep into her voice. "I think that that sounds like a very good idea." One of the keyed-up muscles in her back gave a twinge. She grimaced. "And have a candle by the bedside as well. I think that I need a little reading to relax before I go to sleep."

The girl nodded, her eyes still glued to the ground, and left. For several moments, Jenny continued to sit in her chair. Leaning her head back against the damp cloak hanging off the back of her chair, she sighed and let her gaze slowly make its way along he bookshelves that lined the room.

It had been quite a hassle, bringing her library up the coast from the Caribbean all those years ago. Certainly, it had cost her a pretty penny and gotten her several odd looks when her neighbours realized that they were for her and not some imaginary husband. But Jenny hadn't give a fig for what those around her had thought for years. All those long years in London before her father had finally been forced to allow her to be trained as an Assassin, books and learning had been her only escape from a dull and confining box of expected behaviours for a middle class young lady. Her father, obsessed with keeping her wrapped in cotton and safe from the world, had been forced to allow her to sate her energy in some way, and had decided that education was far more harmless than strapping a sword to her side and jumping off of roofs. 

A small smile quirked at her lips as she remembered the night that he had found out that learning was not enough for her. It had been yet another horrible argument between the two of them, rattling the windows and making Haytham whimper in his bed upstairs. She had been locked in own room, her father recieving some of the other high-ranked Assassins in his study. Pacing back and forth, her own gut still churning with frustrated rage, she had noticed how their carriages waited for them in the back yard as the muffled sounds of the second great argument of the night echoed up through the floorboards. And that's when the first of that night's great and terrible ideas occured to her.

She was not like Haytham, too young to pick up on the undercurrents of tension between their father and his 'business partners'. Nor was she so blind as to be unable to pick out the signs of their membership in the Assassin Brotherhood. (Though at the time, she had not known their name; they were a secret society, after all). One man in particular, dark-haired and ruddy-faced, had kept pushing his son David at her, much to her father's displeasure. He had thought that he was an airheaded twit, with his impractical ideas on slave liberation, but personally she had found him more tolerable than the usual crop that was tossed at her. At the very least, he had only required one correction before calling her by her proper name. And as for his ideas on slave liberation - well, her father had been right that they had needed a little grounding in reality, but she had never minded passion. Better passion for the betterment of their fellow human beings than for drink. 

And so that was how she found herself slipping out of her window and sneaking into the carriage of David's father, upon which she had promptly surprised a rather chilled David himself, who had been waiting for his father. Back in the present, Jenny chuckled and hoisted herself from her seat at the memory. His dark eyes, so round in shock at her sudden appearance in her nightgown! Walking to the bookshelves, she traced their spines with her fingertips. 

He had had a book in his lap, that night; one that he had wanted to gift to her. Her smile softened at the memory. Such a sweet man, David; almost too sweet for the Assassins. 

Waiting in that carriage had actually been quite pleasant. She had convinced David to stay quiet as they had headed towards his home, his father in the other carriage. And once they had arrived, she had made her case for being trained to David's father, who as it turned out was surprisingly highly ranked amongst the Assassins. He had laughed loud enough to wake the servants at her spirit.

Stopping in front of one particular book, she caressed it especially gently. Her father had been furious upon her return home. She hadn't helped, spitting bile and venom at him. Between the two of them, they had held the house hostage to their moods for over a week.

But eventually, he had cooled off. And it was just a few weeks into her training, excused under the guise of visiting her new 'betrothed', David, that he had taken her into his study and handed her an old, battered journal. He had looked at her so seriously, and told her to read it, saying that it would explain why he was the way he was about her being an Assassin.

Taking the book down from the shelf, she gently opened it, flipping through the pages with her thumb. Her father's crabbed and messy writing, telling of his life down in the Caribbean, how he came to the Assassins; how he had watched his friend Mary Read die in a stinking prison, helpless to do anything. It had explained so much to her, and had drawn them closer. 

Closeness was something that she wanted tonight. After Joseph, after nights in the cold; she wanted her father as the comforting figure he had been after she had joined the Assassins. 

Her fingernail caught on a small tear on one of the pages. Carefully disentangling it, she glanced over the page, only to find her eyes stuttering to a stop. 

That face. Drawn crudely as it was, in scratchy and unsteady lines - that had been the face she had seen tonight.

Underneath it was a small label, as well as a few uneven words. 'The Sage, Bartholomew Roberts', and a few words about how her father had met him. But Jenny was not paying attention to that. She was tracing the man's features - the drooping mustache, the differently coloured eyes.

A Sage. Here in Boston. 

She groped for a chair and sat down, suddenly unsteady on her feet. A Sage. What had she learned about Sages in her time with the London Assassins, obsessed as they were with Those Who Came Before? 

They were important.

They signified change.

They worked for some strange goal of their own.

A Sage. Here in Boston. Clearly working towards some goal. 

But this time, it was with other people.

She would have to go back. She had to find out what the Sage was after this time - and what he was planning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So. I have some news.
> 
> This story is not going to be updated for a while. Simply put, I have a story for another fandom eating my brain and it won't let me continue with Hang Together until it's been at least partially written out. So I am going to be using NaNoWriMo to start it out. Hopefully, if nothing else, I'll be on my way to finishing it by the end of the month and be refreshed and back to this story. 
> 
> Overall though, this is just an explanation so that you guys don't worry. I fully intend to come back and finish this story. I just got to get this other story out so that I can focus.


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